Tag Archives: Middle Class Dismissed

59% of US employers will raise health care premiums in 2014

Posted on by

“More employees are getting hit with higher health insurance premiums and co-payments, and many don’t have the money to cover unexpected medical expenses, a new report finds.  More than half of companies (56%) increased employees’ share of health care premiums or co-payments for doctors’ visits in 2013, and 59% of employers say they intend to do the same in 2014.  Employees are worried about covering their medical costs: 49% have less than $1,000 to pay for unexpected out-of-pocket medical expenses.   The Kaiser Family Foundation finds that health care premiums have increased 80% since 2003, nearly three times as fast as wages (31%) and inflation (27%).”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/28/health-care-costs-increasing/9631923/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Want a House? Be Rich and Pay Cash

Posted on by

“Mortgages are much tougher to get these days, requiring higher down payments, more expensive mortgage insurance, lower overall debt levels, and more.  Excessive student loan debt and lingering psychological damage from the last housing bust are deterring first-time buyers.  All-cash-investor-locusts swarmed over the market the past couple of years to buy up property and rent it out.  That has helped drive double-digit price increases in many markets. Unfortunately, wage increases, salary hikes, and population and economic growth haven’t kept pace.  As investors turn from buyers into sellers again, it will put the kibosh on the way-too-fast price increases we’ve been seeing.”

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/want-a-house-be-rich-and-pay-cash-61593

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Bill Bonner: This Hugely Popular Investment Is About to Blow Up

Posted on by

Bill-Bonner2

“In a normal world, savers have the choice of staying in cash or quasi-cash and receiving a fair rate of interest. No more. The interest they receive on a 10-year Treasury note is barely over 2.5%. But the real rate of consumer price inflation – according to the most exhaustive survey, done by the MIT, the Billion Prices Project – is 3.91%.  What kind of world is it where an honest householder loses nearly 1.5% a year on his savings? It is an odd, rigged-up and dangerously windy one.   Investors are stretching out their sails to get higher yields. As a result, bond prices have gone up, reducing yields on bonds rated CCC – below investment grade – to the lowest levels ever recorded.”

http://www.bonnerandpartners.com/this-hugely-popular-investment-is-about-to-blow-up/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Widespread abandonment of farming changes Italy’s landscape

Posted on by

“Centuries after it was colonised by Vandals and Visigoths, Italy is being invaded again – this time by trees.  A report released yesterday revealed that the widespread abandonment of farmland, particularly in mountainous areas in the south of the country, has led re-afforestation on a massive scale.  Italy now has more forest and woodland than it has had in modern times – 35 per cent of the country is covered in trees. The south of Italy is also now increasingly wooded.  It is there that the decline in upland farming has been most pronounced, after small-scale farmers gave up their hard-scrabble properties and moved to towns and cities, or left Italy altogether.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10828717/Rapid-rise-of-forests-changes-the-landscape-for-Italians.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Get used to driving at 40mph, says top UK highways official

Posted on by

“Motorists must get used to driving at 40mph on the motorway, the civil servant in charge of Britain’s roads has said as he admitted the roads will get ‘slower and slower’.  Labour said the admission was evidence that a decision to cut infrastructure spending in the early years of the Coalition meant that officials now had to manage congestion rather than invest in new roads.  The Agency is in charge of maintaining 4,300 miles of England’s motorways and A roads. Four million vehicles use the roads daily.  Mr Dalton blamed Treasury spending rules for meaning that he lost £20million from his roads spending budget due to the very wet weather in January and February.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10825851/Motorway-speeds-Get-used-to-driving-at-40mph-says-top-highways-official.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Government Mismanagement Causes California Water Crisis

Posted on by

“California Central Valley has a water crisis, not because the state doesn’t have enough water, but because government agencies have allowed massive amounts of water to flow out to the ocean instead of storing it for future need.”

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Apartment starts surge; new home permits down 3% in 2014

Posted on by

“Builders ramped up construction in April, but they were mostly building multifamily apartment buildings. A monthly report from the U.S. Census Bureau showed total housing starts up 13 percent month to month, but that was driven by a 43 percent monthly jump in buildings with five or more units. Single-family housing starts rose just under 1 percent for the month.  Building permits, which are a better gauge of future construction activity, bode poorly for single-family homes. Those permits are down more than 3 percent from a year ago. This shows builders do not expect demand for single-family homes to strengthen any time soon.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101680005

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Are you part of the ‘pay-as-you-live’ generation?

Posted on by

“In late 2012 the venture capitalist and digital analyst Mary Meeker was among the first to identify what she labelled ‘the asset-light generation’, who access documents, music, film and other media digitally, rather than in some material form. Meeker also alluded to the sharing economy – also known as the ‘pay-as-you-live’ market – as evidence that consumers are increasingly preoccupied with ‘access’ rather than ‘ownership’. And it is everywhere, manifest in the success of companies such as Zipcar, Spotify, Girl Meets Dress and Airbnb, where individuals rent out spare rooms or their homes to total (albeit ID-vetted) strangers via a central search engine.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10810304/Are-you-part-of-the-pay-as-you-live-generation.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Peak Real Median Income In USA = 1999; Washington DC = 2012

Posted on by

“Real Median household income peaked way back in 1999 at $56,000 and by 2012 it was down 9%—an unprecedented decline. It goes without saying that Washington’s Keynesian ministrations on the money printing and national debt front didn’t much help.  In fact, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded from $450 billion  to $4.4 trillion during that period or by nearly 10X. Likewise, the national debt has nearly quadrupled  to $17 trillion during the same period.  Well, all this monetary and fiscal profligacy did apparently help in one precinct: Namely, the Washington beltway where median household income reached its all-time high in 2012 and undoubtedly continues to rise.”

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-keynesian-economy-in-one-chart-peak-median-real-income-in-usa1999-30-states-2004-or-earlier-washington-dc2012/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Lew Rockwell: Speaking Truth to Monetary Power

Posted on by

“We have every reason to expect governments to exploit their positions as monopolists of the production of money in ways that increase their power and benefit favored constituencies. We do not need ‘monetary policy’ any more than we need a paintbrush policy, a baseball bat policy, or an automobile policy. We do not need a monopoly institution to create money for us. Money, like any good, is better produced on the market within the nexus of economic calculation. Money creation by government or its privileged central bank yields us business cycles, monetary debasement, and an increase in the power of government.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35335/Llewellyn-H-Rockwell-Jr-Speaking-Truth-to-Monetary-Power/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet